Serguei Popov’s talk

Following the main panel, Blockchain Overview in Brazil and World consisting of Stan Larimer (Bitshares and Cryptonomex CEO), Joel Dietz (Swarm Research Founder) and Alex Nascimento (Managing Director at 7CC), Dr. Serguei Popov gave his talk titled IOTA and Tangle: basic principles.

The goal was to explain what IOTA is in 30 minutes to a Blockchain audience constituted by a mix of business and technology professionals. After a brief background on how and why IOTA came into being, Popov explained the fundamentals of this new DLT, how its revolutionary data structure works, and some of the key aspects such as its lack of transaction fees.

Since this was a Blockchain congress and most of the people had not heard about the Tangle, the talk was kept as clear as possible. Later, an IOTA panel would provide space to go in depth on some concepts such as scalability, tip selection algorithm, and quantum computing resistance.

The audience listened to Popov intently during his talk, and ended up with lots of questions about difficult-to-grasp aspects of this revolutionary DLT. This gave him a chance to explain a bit more about things that didn’t get covered in the talk itself.

Housing-as-a-Service, an IOTA use case

At the use cases panel, Rafael Presa presented a new business model for the real estate industry using the Tangle. It’s a new technology that allows for a much fairer way to charge tenants or, by his definition, users. The idea for Housing-as-a-Service was inspired by three other concepts: Microtransactions, sharing economy, and Internet of Things.

Rafael Presa introduces Housing as a Service as IOTA use case

Those ideas converge on the fact that the co-living spaces are growing around the world as we see a change in the mindset and habits of a new generation. A core of the changing new mindset is that it’s not fair to pay for what you don’t use. Not only for shared utilities, but even the appliances, tools, inputs, and furniture can be properly billed on a per-use basis. In a traditional system of bookkeeping, granular details like this are almost impossible to account for, which is why Rafael is working on applying the IOTA Tangle in association with biometric technology and IoT, allowing for a much more fluid payment process that happens in real time instead of a more traditional and restrictive daily or monthly period.

On the other hand, investors and property owners will see a reduction in their operational costs, a decrease in vacancy, and a more trust-able way to avoid problems with bad users. This overall improved experience is afforded due to all of the steps in the process, from the search and request aspect all the way to the property access aspect, being automated and relayed in a score-and-match procedure.

IOTA Panel: advantages of using IOTA

At the end of the first Congress day, Cassio Cusson moderated a panel with Serguei Popov and the IF research team in Brazil including by Olivia Saa and Paulo Finardi. This was a more technical approach to some of the most interesting aspects of IOTA, explained by mathematicians.

1. Popov: Fee-less incentives

Popov’s presentation introduced the way in which the transactions to validate (tips) are chosen by the network participants, and the problems IOTA had to deal with in the past in order to get to the system that we see today. Now, the system chooses tips that “did their work” while it ignores transactions that are not cooperating or are too old (this are referenced as “lazy tips”).

Nash Equilibrium was one of the topics treated by Popov

This mechanism is known as Tip Selection Algorithm, and represents a central piece of the Tangle. The success of the system proposed by IOTA is related to how efficient the execution of this decision is. In order to explain it, the construction of cumulative weight had to be covered together with some other concepts inherited from the DAG based model.

2. Olivia Saa: how to increase the TPS?

Olivia quickly went through Blockchain limitations in terms of scalability, analyzing the ways in which this data structure allows for an increase in TPS performance. Bigger blocks and shorter block mining intervals are some of the problems involved when using this as a strategy to get more transactions processed.

Network latency as a limitation to the block creation interval.

Blockchain has big issues by design when it comes to scale, and does not seem to be a good choice if you want to have a mechanism to pay daily expenses.

Because IOTA is designed for the Internet of Things, where hundreds of thousands of transactions between devices will occur per second, it needs a data structure that can deal with this volume of information, and that’s where the Tangle comes in.

3. Paulo Finardi: quantum-resistance

According to MIT Technology Review, quantum-computing can hack the cryptography hash that universally secures the blockchain, and more broadly, the internet. While we do not yet know when and how this kind of new computing will appear, giants as Google, IBM, and even Amazon are racing toward quantum solutions, so it might be closer than we think.

Paulo explained why IOTA is ready for quantum computing because of the usage of a One Time Signatures (OTS) scheme called Winternitz. This scheme was chosen due to its superior Quantum Resistance over ECC schemes and allows us to think on a future scenario in which QC and the IoT can cohabit without security issues.

Workshop participants published XDK data to the Tangle and the Datamarket

In attendance was Marcell Ribeiro from Bosch Innovation Hub who kindly lent us some XDKs to spread among the participants.

Within an hour, those taking part of the experience were able to understand what IOTA is from a practical standpoint, and how it can be used to decentralize sensor’s data while they got to know the amazing XDK, created by Bosch.

Conclusions and acknowledgements

After going through the two Congress days it is fair to say that IOTA was generously represented. From an introduction by one of the founders himself, to a technical panel, use cases, and even a hands-on workshop. All of this was carefully organized by Rafael Presa, who was at all times coordinating between the IOTA panelists and the Blockcrypto event organizers to make sure that everything went smoothly.

The collaboration of Bosch Brazil, who lent us the XDKs needed for the workshop and sent the amazing Marcell Ribeiro to participate in the experience, was also crucial to showcase how the XDK and IOTA can be combined and put to work.

Now that this event has passed, I can see how it is essential for IOTA to have this kind of presence at Blockchain congresses when possible. It helps to spread the word about this new alternative solution to decentralize data in a trust-less way that goes beyond what blockchain can do.